Fast forward a couple years...

Here we go again!  I am going to resume this blog because in the years that have ensued since I last post here, I have not been as good as I wanted to be about recording the wonders of youth.  I occasionally go back and read these posts and love reflecting back on how much they changed over the course of just a few months.  I don't want to lose those memories in spite of being a private person by nature.  I wish I could be better about scrapbooking and writing journals on paper, but I am not- plus, paper journals are not natural disaster-proof.  I like the combination of photos and words that blogging allows too. 
So Carter is 4 and a quarter now.  He is easygoing and pretty much always great to have around.  He is really into pirates, Star Wars, Curious George, bugs, and building forts and battlesites with blocks.  I love the little voices he employs to take on different roles during the battles he creates with his soldiers and star wars characters.  He has the little droid voice mastered.  I am pretty impressed with the scenes he constructs.  Once he created a fort underneath the dining room table, and when I had to dismantle it later so we could eat, I discovered a weapons "stash" in a tiny little hole on the underside of the table.  I got a kick out of it.  I had no idea it was there, but Carter has combed every last inch of this house. 
He is also becoming much more self-sufficient.  This week he finally mastered the ability to buckle himself into his carseat in spite of it being very challenging even for me at times.  He insists on doing it now, and has great persistence. 
Persistence, however, is still a foreign word for little Gabe.  He is my child who wants things perfect and expects them to be perfect right away, or else that's it.  We were building a tall tower yesterday, and even though it was going well in my eyes, Gabe would add about four blocks and then seem to get frustrated with it all, and knock it down, saying, "I can't."  I am going to keep doing more of this type of activity with him, modeling how common failure is, and how to react to it so he can get more practice with failing at things. 
Gabe is doing great at potty training however!  I have enjoyed watching him this week.  It was touchy at first, with Gabe being very averse to sitting on his potty.  Finally, I juiced him up, we read, Once Upon a Potty about 5 million times while sitting on the potty, and practiced saying, "and sat and sat and sat and sat" over and over again so that he could understand that sometimes you have to sit awhile.  It worked eventually, although I discovered that I needed to back off to remove some of the pressure to perform.  The first time he used the potty occured after about five hours of repeated potty trips resulting in nothing.  I finally dragged the portable potty in front of the tv and plopped him on it.  He got up when the program was over and danced around saying, "I went pee pee yay!!"  Over and over again.  He didn't want to flush it.  We waited until daddy got home so he could show him.  He was so excited.  We called everyone and shared the proclamation.  Now, after a week of success, he is doing great.  We still celebrate after each successful potty trip with a bite of chocolate sundae cake.  Last night Gabe came up to me and said, "I went pee pee mommy, How 'bout some cake."  He cracks me up.